Underworld Earth Page 8

  Forcing myself to look back, I ask who.

  “Samantha Wallace.”

  Unbelievable.

  “So,” I say, no longer able to suppress anger, “you want me to recruit the poor woman, but at the same time I’m supposed to murder her son? Who happens to be my friend?”

  Another sigh; defeat lives in every one.

  “Samantha is not a target. She single-handedly saved Haven before. I think if you let present events play out, a lot of this will actually resolve itself.”

  I shake my head at him.

  “What is wrong with you people?” I ask, to which he chuckles, and asks where he should begin. On second thought, I don’t want to hear the answer, and make for the room’s door.

  He doesn't call me back.

  The Path into Darkness

  Samantha

  Once upon a time, the future was bright.

  When you’re young, it’s all too easy to assume that a strong future means a blissful one. You have comparably few responsibilities to adulthood, and know little of the despair and inevitability that will plague you later in life. Few could foretell with their own mother dying, returning home to face the music warranted their sister immediately following, coming down with a fast-acting, deadly flu.

  Even fewer would predict this flu killing everyone they crossed paths with on a weekly basis in youth—murdering the doctors and nurses with the only power to staunch its spread and render the greatest country on Earth a barren wasteland in a matter of hours.

  In these moments, you might think of those brighter days; when your husband was still a boy trying to grow a full beard, kissing you as you both signed the dotted line to your first home. Your bastard child slept soundly in an nearby idling car, but it didn’t matter if he was born out of wedlock when he was the best thing to ever happen to you.

  Congratulations, the real estate agent—a patronizing woman with a bob cut named Joy Haladay—said, as Derek’s arm found your waist, and everything seemed to fall into place. Your hair was longer then, curled in a way you wouldn't be caught dead wearing in your thirties. The nineteen-year-old’s beach body was tainted by pregnancy’s markings, but that young girl’s spirit persisted in your eyes.

  Staring out an SUV’s window, shrunken into the passenger seat of a vehicle belonging to a man I barely know, recognizing the country I grew up in is a struggle. The Washington State wilderness is as dead as Haven was when we left it in the rearview. All its fresh horrors are etched permanently into my mind, along with Mark’s warning it won’t get better from here.

  My companion keeps eyes on the road over tensed hands, clutching the steering wheel’s ten and two. Less than ever do I have an interest in him. His sunken eyes and disheveled hair make him appear ratty as the book he’s kept close since we met in the terminal. It slides between our seats on the center console dividing us as Mark navigates bends in the Interstate, weaving between empty lanes. He uses his turn signal despite no other cars to communicate with.

  Guess old habits die hard.

  It is all I can do to push Catherine and Stephanie from my mind. I could not have saved them, just as I was helpless to save all the people who became corpses in the streets of Haven. My other siblings must be dead, too. We were never close, as Stephanie and I almost were, but sadness is a bleak affair, and I am forced to mourn them as well.

  Getting home to my family is all that matters.

  Nothing but endless plots of farmland beyond the highway to distract me, thoughts drift to the day we left this wretched corner of the West Coast. It was in the planning stages for months—as soon as Derek graduated. Every day brought new doubts that we would ever escape Haven. The death of Derek’s mother and Catherine’s endless emergencies brought delays and promises of one more week until I couldn’t fathom freedom any longer.

  I remember smiling as we ducked out of our hometown in the dead of night. Not a goodbye was said. I might have told all of three people where we were going.

  Let our families figure it out, Derek assured me. His grin was as wide as mine while Nathan slept soundly in the backseat. We’ll call them in a couple days.

  What I wouldn’t give to feel that again.

  “Still trying to wrap my head around this,” Mark says. He scans the flat panorama, nothing at all like the Rockies’ peaks and valleys behind us. “How something like this even happened.”

  “I wish I could say it was wrong,” I reply, “but I mean, look at the evidence. It doesn’t look great.”

  “Do you think we are? Sick, I mean?”

  “If we are, it’s setting in a lot slower than it is for everyone else. I wonder why that is.”

  Mark shrugs but does not break his fixation with the road. He doesn’t glance in his rearview—perhaps there’s no need, or he’s unnerved by what’s back there.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone in my family is even alive. My wife, she... well, we don’t talk. Things went bad, we separated. Probably wouldn’t pick up if we were the last two people on Earth.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, unsure what else I could possibly offer him.

  “Not your fault. It was mine. I mean, I had it all. But... I couldn’t... stay faithful, I guess. She gave me all the chances I could have asked for, and I still couldn’t keep it in my pants.”

  I don’t know if my husband has ever cheated on me. With the long hours, spontaneous trips and multitude of things he can’t tell me, there would be no way to truly know. But on an instinctual level, he has never given me reason to worry.

  “Do you have kids together?” I ask, still unsure whether I care. Mark shakes his head, scoffing like the question is ridiculous.

  “No. She never wanted children, so we never tried. It doesn’t matter much now, does it? If that survival rate is anywhere near true, she’s probably dead anyway.”

  “Would she like you any more for showing up… assuming she is alive?”

  “No,” Mark chuckles. “No, probably not.”

  We say nothing for a while. I can’t convince him there is anything left to drive towards. All that matters is he believes something exists, and it lies in the same direction I’m headed.

  As long as it gets me home as fast as possible, the rest of Mark’s problems are his own.

  A short while later, we come to a roadblock on the highway. For a long stretch, the scenery blended. Barns and silos dominated the landscape when it wasn’t overtaken by barren fields whose harvest will not be met in the fall. The odd lake provided reprieve for the identical scenery, but the blockage drawn across the Interstate’s east and westbound lanes is such a departure, it immediately catches my full attention.

  My stomach growls, having not eaten since I climbed off the airplane, when I shoved a blueberry muffin down the hatch, downing it with black coffee

  “Mark,” I point. “Look. There.”

  The construction is crass, composed of debris dragged into the road, along with a pickup truck barricading the eastbound lane. Several men ahead notice the lone vehicle rolling up, tapping their compatriots on the shoulders.

  The guards do not look to be here with any professional mandate. Their clothes are filthy, faces sooty. They carry enough weapons to put their survival on a much higher tier than ours.

  Their leader holds out both hands, demanding we slow. A courtesy, since obstructions in the road give us no choice. He is shorter than his companions, but cleaner than the others, with most of his yellowed teeth. His eyes are a striking green, hardly complemented by cigarette smoke rising from the dour stick between his lips, permanently staining grey whiskers around his mouth.

  “Greetings,” he says as Mark obliges him, rolling down the power windows.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” my companion asks. “Doesn’t really seem like any of you are here in an official capacity.”

  The man guarding the road giggles.

  “Whole country’s in the fucking toilet, man. I’d say whatever protection an area can afford is as official a
s you’re gonna find.”

  “Which makes you folks what?” Mark asks. The stranger’s eyes drift across the front seat to meet mine. Given the scowl beneath them, he says little.

  “Step out of the vehicle, please.”

  “What?” I ask as the man giving orders in these parts produces a revolver from the holster on his waist; its end is not pointed at us, but the sound of its sliding out suggests that could easily change.

  “Don’t make me ask twice, people. Out of the car! Before I have to do something y’all won’t be fond of.”

  On some level, I know better than to argue. Derek once refused to back down from a man with a gun and required thirteen stitches in his jaw for challenging him.

  Mark has evidently not learned that lesson yet.

  “Listen asshole, I’m not giving you my car. This is all the wife left me. Took the house and everything else I own in the world. So, if you don’t mind, I would really appreciate if you’d back the fuck off.”

  The leader smirks in the silence that follows. As expected, he grabs the driver door, pulling it open, dragging Mark into the road. I raise my hands as the stranger trains his sights to the passenger seat...

  “Out of the car, lady,” he says, one eye closed over the end of the gun. “Nice and easy, now.”

  Informing him of every action I’m taking, from reaching for the handle to stepping out, I proceed slowly, rounding the car towards him, open palms in the air.

  “On your knees,” the leader says, gesturing to the road with his weapon. “Now.”

  “Are you going to kill us?” Mark asks.

  The man snickers as one of his friends whispers in his ear. He agrees, giggling again.

  “Depends.”

  “On?”

  “Whether the lady is willing to play.”

  Mark and I share a disgusted look, and I clench my jaw in disbelief that our survival depends on something sexual.

  “Why?” I ask, “So you can kill us anyway?”

  “Samantha!” Mark hisses from his knees. His unkempt hair blows in the cool breeze, face bruised where it met pavement. “Do as the man says!”

  The revolver might take my life, and these men can have a go at my dead body, but dignity is not for sale. The man holding us hostage studies me as I step closer to him, refusing to submit. Sensing he’s messed with the wrong woman, he pitches the cigarette in the road, snorting at the men who follow him.

  “Lady’s got more balls than some of you!”

  “Shut up, Frank,” one of his subordinates grumbles. “Either make her open her mouth, or let’s get going.”

  The urge to strike Frank, whose uncomfortable fixation on my chest does not help matters, is barely contained by self-preservation. We are outnumbered, all of them armed. Our captor giggles, ordering his men to appropriate the SUV.

  “Enjoy the walk,” he quips.

  “Hey, that’s my car!” Mark exclaims, rushing to his feet. The barrel of Frank’s weapon raises, and he reconsiders his current strategy.

  “Really?”

  Taken aback by resistance to reclaim what is his, my companion backs towards me, hands raised.

  “Alright,” he pants. “Take it. Just, please...don’t hurt us.”

  Frank snickers, lowering the revolver. Overcast sky carries faint whiffs of death in its currents, washing over the road before being carried off into a murky horizon.

  “Smart man,” he says, motioning to the men in his service. A few pile into the SUV’s open doors; one of Frank’s minions takes the wheel, and another sets about playing with the air conditioning. The rest return to their own vehicles. Frank backs away from us, keeping his revolver raised.

  “If I were you, I’d not worry about filing an insurance claim on this cocksucker. Got a feeling not many are left to take the call. Toodles.”

  Giggling, Frank retreats to the stolen SUV’s rear door, only turning his back to climb inside. Watching both vehicles speed away, I can’t meet my companion’s glare. I can’t listen to his curses, ringing hollow under a grey sky.

  All I can do is wait for this nightmare to end.

  Peter

  It only takes one moment, in the fabric of everything good, fucked up and in between, to realize you’re in Hell.

  Bodies in the streets notwithstanding, it should be obvious. Haven’s upper suburbia is marred by silence. The absence of cars on the adjacent roadway, or distant trucks rattling in and out of town, is immediate and profound.

  I have lived here all my life and never heard absolute quiet inside its confines.

  Walking behind Sydney, my daughter reaches for my hand. The woman’s entourage strolls behind us, deserving of Fiona’s full wariness.

  “You two gonna drag your feet the entire way?” Sydney asks.

  I don’t know why we didn’t die. Why Meghan couldn’t survive, but we did. She was healthy; sure, a little overworked. But she should have been able to fight it off. Instead, it killed her like some decrepit woman in her sleep.

  Every time I close my eyes, her motionless body looks back, and I can’t bear to watch her that way.

  “You okay, Daddy?” Fiona asks.

  “Yeah, sweetie,” I reply, not wanting to worry her. The houses all around us are abandoned, and Haven is a wasteland of blowing winds and bloated corpses in those homes. But sure, I’m alright. “Just... a lot has happened.”

  “You’re telling me,” Sydney adds, catching herself as she starts to swear.

  “Coming from the person going around, looting houses with these two gorillas,” I say, pointing to the large men behind us. “I’d be interested in what you can tell us! Especially why someone who works in a damn convenience store is the point guard on home invasions!”

  Sydney stops walking and turns to face me. Her companions, introduced to me as Ron and Andre, stop as well.

  “Just because some of us don’t make thirty bucks an hour, doesn’t mean we have no discernible skills when the world goes to shit.”

  I scoff, clutching Fi’s hand tighter.

  “And in what world makes you think I make thirty bucks an hour, lady?”

  “Don’t lie to me. I’ve seen your fucking house.”

  “Oh, you mean the house my wife works to afford us? The house you people just tried to rob, capitalizing on a goddamn tragedy? Yeah, that house is just an automatic indicator I’m some bigshot, isn’t it? Worthy of scorn from the poor working class?”

  “Well,” Sydney replies, “now I know you’re just some weak-ass excuse for a man, making your wife toil on your behalf.”

  I doubt this woman knows about the corpse in my marital bed, who I mean to return to and bury once free of her strong-arming. I wonder if her associates saw Meghan’s puffy eyes and pale skin, matching all the dead people we pass in the street now. Fiona eyes them with clear discomfort but said nothing of it before Sydney mentioned her mother.

  “Where is Mommy?”

  “Uh,” I begin, looking at our new escorts. Sydney smirks, as if asking how on Earth I am going to explain to a seven-year-old that her mother is rotting in our home.

  Think fast, York.

  “She’ll join us later, sweetheart.”

  “So, she’s not dead? Like all these people?”

  Kids.

  “We’ll talk about it later, okay, Fi?”

  She and Meghan were not close, much like my mother and I have the coldest relationship ever. Still, I cannot predict what level of emotion she will display toward Meghan’s passing.

  “Where are we going anyway?” I ask Sydney as we progress past the gas station where we first spoke. She eyes her former place of employment; a car parked at the pump has been abandoned, its owner nowhere to be seen.

  “Town square,” she replies. “Is that alright with you?”

  Best to stop asking questions. It only serves to rile her up. Instead, I look around at the town I lived in my entire life; observing the bodies of the fallen. No one is coming to collect them, and they will rot as the we
ather warms up.

  And it’s across the country.

  Maybe the world.

  “Wonder who’s in charge now,” I muse, despite knowing better. “You know, if there’s someone coming to drag all this away. Can’t be sanitary, after all. Nobody will be able to live here.”

  Sydney snickers, feet dragging along the road.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  She stops walking again, facing us. I stop, along with Fiona, whose eyes widen at the sneer on her pale face. She is small and thin, with heavy circles under her eyes. The person who sells me a pack of cigarettes twice a week, to whom I would rarely give a second thought in the world, now holds all the answers.

  That prospect is terrifying.

  “Why?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why should anyone be in charge of us?”

  “Why not? You don’t want someone to come along, clear this away? You don’t want a voice to tell us this is not as hopeless as it looks? I mean, Jesus! I have a... I have a kid here! What the fuck do you mean, why should anyone be in charge of us?”

  Ron and Andre have nothing to offer, and simply shake their heads.

  Sydney chuckles.

  “You’ve been in your nice, cushy house too long, Peter. America’s changed. The middle class is done. And this thing? This plague? It couldn’t have come at a better fucking time.”

  “What does… what does that even mean?”

  Behind her, the busiest road in all of Haven is littered with bodies that have begun to bloat, and the wind echoes against volumes of silence permeating the town.

  “Think about it, Peter. All our lives, we’ve been distracted. We’ve been complacent. We have worked our hands and bled patriotism for a country that only fucked us sideways! But when the time came to pleasure us, reward us for the profits of our labor, The Man simply pulled out, and went to fucking sleep on us.

  “Now,” she says, “how many people that just died, do you think, sat on massive amounts of money? Ninety percent were regular Joes, like me and my friends here. Ronald works in a fucking mailroom. I don’t know what Andre does all day, but I’m sure it’s important to a functioning society, right Andre?”